A system for authoring browser-based CALL material incorporating Google speech recognition has been developed and made freely available for download. The system provides a teacher with a simple way to set up CALL material, including an optional image, sound or video, which will elicit spoken (and/or typed) answers from the user and check them…

This exploratory study examines the potentially beneficial role of utilizing an interactive video program (BBC's Mi Vida Loca) in aiding second language learners of Spanish to enhance intercultural competence via pragmatic training. The results of a discourse completion task shows that students who watched MVL significantly improved their…

Language teaching can be enhanced by effective uses of technology; nonetheless, there are teachers who are reluctant to integrate technology in their practice. The debated issue has resulted in a number of Ministries of Education worldwide, including the Greek Ministry, to support a transition through the introduction of Interactive Whiteboards…

The contribution brings part of the research results on using interactive boards in teaching English at lower-secondary stage of elementary schools in the Czech Republic. The whole research focused on ways of using this modern device, on types of interaction and mainly tried to find out whether there is sufficient space for developing…

The current study described the uses of smart boards in English as foreign language (EFL) classrooms. This study also investigated the role of smart boards in promoting student engagement, the benefits of smart boards for teachers, using smart boards for improving motivation, and smart boards in the service of linguistic and cultural elements. The…

Students with special needs are often isolated from the rest of the class and have to attend specific courses designed for them. This report describes an action-research project with two students with a hearing impediment and who were following a course at a university of science and technology. A student with mild autism was appointed as a…

The purpose of this study was to examine ninth grade EFL students' experiences and attitudes towards classrooms equipped with interactive whiteboards (IWB). The data were collected with a questionnaire about attitudes towards IWB use in EFL classes, and observations from three different classrooms in three different high schools. The study…

A group of university students used a variety of personal portable devices (cellphones, tablets, laptops, and netbooks) which distracted them in English class. This qualitative action research aimed to implement activities entailing the use of such devices and to learn their impact on students' learning and the use of English in class. Thus, a…

Our pilot project created blended/online courses to accommodate the growing needs of precollegiate and collegiate students interested in learning Korean and Japanese. In the initial phase, we conducted a survey of students' experiences with and perceptions about blended/online Asian language learning. We found a general lack of familiarity with,…

Although the interactive whiteboard (IWB) is becoming increasingly prevalent in classrooms throughout the more efficient parts of the world and research has shown how this tool can increase the effectiveness of teaching and even transform pedagogy (Kennewell & Beauchamp, 2007), research literature overviews (Higgins, Beauchamp, & Miller,…

Working within a task-based approach to the teaching of speaking, two interactive whiteboard-based pre-task activities focusing on different phases of the speech production process (Levelt, 1989) were developed and compared with an activity based on the speaking activities currently offered in English as a foreign language course books. The first…

This article reports on the findings of a study conducted to investigate teachers' and students' perceptions of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom and to find out differences of perceptions according to some variables such as gender, level of English proficiency, hours of weekly IWB use, and years…

This article describes the influence of tool and task design on student interaction in language learning at a distance. Interaction in a multimodal desktop video conferencing environment, FlashMeeting, is analyzed from an ecological perspective with two main foci: participation rates and conversational feedback strategies. The quantitative…

In this paper we discuss how the Brigham Young University Technology Assisted Language Learning Group (BYU TALL Group) develops video-based dramatic narratives to increase the amount of context we provide to English as a second language (ESL) learners. First, we discuss the problem of decontextualization in education, the contextualism…

At Dalarna University, Sweden, modes of communication are offered at many points of Kenning's continuum with a web-based learning platform, including asynchronous document exchange and collaborative writing tools, e-mail, recorded lectures in various formats, live streamed lectures with the possibility of text questions to the lecturer in real…